The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs.
For example, contacts are typically vertical interconnect structures formed in an integrated circuit that connect the diffusion regions and/or gate electrodes of a semiconductor device to an interconnect layer. Individual semiconductor devices formed in a semiconductor substrate are usually electrically coupled to each other through contacts in order to form functional integrated circuits. Forming contacts to electrically connect semiconductor elements with smaller and smaller sizes in the semiconductor substrate is getting more difficult.
Thus, it is desired to have a technology that is improved, to form reliable contact structures in a semiconductor device.